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The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow last month and the summit he had with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has sharply divided opinion among Indian experts

Iran has paid the ‘Palestinian Resistance’ billions of dollars, including for every weapon used and for any house demolished in the West Bank and every weapon, says terrorist leader.

1/2 Palestinian Islamic Jihad Leader Ziyad Nakhalah: Iran Has Paid The Palestinian Resistance Billions Of Dollars – It Pays For Every House Demolished In The West Bank And Every Weapon Used By The Resistance pic.twitter.com/pdIGrnUYIb

— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) April 20, 2023

The post WATCH: Iran has ‘managed to create deterrence vis-a-vis Israel’ appeared first on World Israel News.

All members of Congress are invited to pre-record remarks; Joel Griffith of Heritage says “this unjustly allows her to rehabilitate her image.”

By Menachem Wecker, JNS

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has compared boycotts of Israel and of Nazi Germany, was listed as one of three members of Congress delivering opening remarks at a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom event on Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims.

That’s according to a listing shared on Twitter for what was to be an April 25 event, during which the USCIRF was to release its 2023 annual report. The event is now slated for May 1, without the congresswoman or her two colleagues, listed on the docket.

In response to a query from JNS about why Omar, given her history of antisemitic statements, was an appropriate speaker choice, a spokesperson for the commission, which is part of the federal government, who did not provide a name directed JNS to the webpage, “including a list of speakers on our website.” Omar was not listed on the site.

In response to JNS reporting that Omar was no longer a speaker, Jeremy Slevin, a senior advisor to Omar, called the JNS report “false.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but this story is completely false,” he said. “Rep. Omar will be delivering virtual remarks at the event, just like Sen. Rubio.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) were the other two listed in the original announcement.

When JNS asked the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom about the claim from Omar’s office that the reporting was false, the unnamed USCIRF spokesperson told JNS: “We had a change in date to May 1, 2023. This event is being held virtually, and we invite all members of Congress to provide remarks, as they wish, for USCIRF’s annual report rollout.”

Rabbi David Saperstein, director emeritus of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, whom JNS was unable to reach via multiple channels, remains listed as moderator at the event.

Laura Ortiz, a spokeswoman for Rubio, told JNS that the senator would not attend in person but would pre-record remarks. She deferred questions to the USCIRF. “They organize the event, not the senator,” she said. “That’s up to their prerogative.”

“Marco has been on the record on his disagreements with the congresswoman on multiple occasions,” she added.

‘A slap in the face’

Joel Griffith, a financial regulations research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told JNS that it is “preposterous” for the commission to invite someone who calls for boycotting the lone Middle East nation, which offers religious freedom for Jews, Christians and Muslims, to speak at an event about religious freedom.

“There is no excuse for any organization that claims to respect religious freedom to invite Ilhan Omar to speak,” he said. “This unjustly allows her to rehabilitate her image.”

Griffith, who told JNS he speaks as a “proud Jewish American,” encouraged Saperstein not to moderate any event with Omar.

“I think that the commission owes an apology, both to our ally Israel and to those of us who care so deeply about this,” Griffith said. Of Omar being welcomed to speak on Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism, he added: “To invite her is a slap in the face of people who put their lives on the line.”

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom spokesperson did not respond when JNS offered an opportunity for it to comment on Griffith’s suggestion it owes an apology.

Omar has a long history of antisemitic statements, including accusing Israel of having “hypnotized the world” and Jews of buying control of Congress (“It’s all about the Benjamins”). She has called Israel an “apartheid state” and likened it to the Taliban and Hamas terrorist groups.

Per the USCIRF website, the 2023 annual report “documents systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom that have occurred in the last year, and provides recommendations to the U.S. government intended to deter religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief abroad.”

The post US commission on religious freedom event no longer lists Ilhan Omar as speaker – but she’ll have her say appeared first on World Israel News.

‘Memory Paths’ provides the most direct route to the site along with other relevant information.

By Pesach Benson, TPS

Ahead of Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and terror victims, the Defense Ministry launched an app to help people locate the graves of family and friends in military cemeteries.

Named “Memory Paths,” users enter the name of the individual whose grave they are looking for. The app provides the most direct route to the grave.

The app also links to a website where users can recite Psalms and  light a virtual memorial candle.

The day also honors deceased members of the Israel Police, Mossad, Israeli Prison Service and the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet). This includes Druze, Bedouins, Christians and Muslims.

In 1980, the Knesset expanded Memorial Day to include people killed in action going back to 1860, when Jews first began moving outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. This includes members of various pre-state underground militias who fought the British.

The day was later expanded to include civilians killed in terror attacks and other hostile acts.

Memorial Day begins at sundown on April 24. Sirens will wail at 8:00 p.m. and again at 11:00 a.m. as the nation joins in a minute of silence. Ceremonies will be held across the country and families of the fallen will visit the graves.

A torch-lighting ceremony at the Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery on April 25 towards sundown marks the transition from the somber Memorial Day to the joy of Independence Day.

“In preparation for the upcoming Memorial Day, the system will operate in some of the cemeteries and I hope that by the next Memorial Day we will expand the application to all military cemeteries in Israel,” said Aryeh Moalem, head of the Defense Ministry’s Department of Commemoration and Heritage Families.

The post New app finds graves of fallen Israeli soldiers appeared first on World Israel News.

Gosar is “well known as one of the top advocates of the State of Israel and a defender of those of the Jewish faith across the world.”

By Andrew Bernard, The Algemeiner

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) in a now-deleted newsletter on Sunday included a link to an article whose headline described Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland as “Jewish Warmongers” on a website that routinely publishes antisemitic and other hate content.

As first reported by Media Matters on Monday, Gosar’s newsletter listed the article’s title as “Congressman Gosar: Warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangerous Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed.’”

But as published on Veterans Today, which bills itself as an “uncensored independent alternative foreign policy” site, that headline read: “Congressman Gosar: Jewish Warmongers Nuland & Blinken ‘Are Dangerous Fools Who Can Get Us All Killed.’”

The intentional deletion of the antisemitic portion of the headline has raised questions about who was responsible for the newsletter’s content.

In a statement to media, a member of Gosar’s team claimed that a third-party aggregator service was used to compile the links, and that the article in question was “updated” the day after the newsletter was released on April 16. A cached version of the webpage, however, does not show any updates to the headline since the article was first published in February.

Gosar’s staffer added that they would not link to Veterans Today in future newsletters, that Gosar himself did not mention Blinken’s or Nuland’s religion, and that he is “well known as one of the top advocates of the State of Israel and a defender of those of the Jewish faith across the world.”

Rep. Gosar did not immediately respond to The Algemeiner’s request for comment.

Gosar’s associations with the alt-right and racist groups has raised criticism in the past.

In 2021 Gosar was the keynote speaker at the America First Political Action Conference organized by the Holocaust denier and alt-right commentator Nick Fuentes. Later that year he appeared in fundraising materials with Fuentes, but then denied knowledge of the event.

Gosar was censured by the Democratic-majority House in November 2021 and stripped of his committee assignments, which were restored in January when Republicans retook the chamber after the 2022 midterms.

The post US lawmaker Paul Gosar links to ‘Jewish warmonger’ antisemitic hate site appeared first on World Israel News.

The bill, approved by a 219-203 party-line vote, is unlikely to advance further because the Democratic-led Senate will not support it and the White House said President Joe Biden would veto it.

By Associated Press

Transgender athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth was male would be barred from competing on girls or women’s sports teams at federally supported schools and colleges under legislation pushed through Thursday by House Republicans checking off another high-profile item on their social agenda.

The bill, approved by a 219-203 party-line vote, is unlikely to advance further because the Democratic-led Senate will not support it and the White House said President Joe Biden would veto it.

Supporters said the legislation, which would put violators at risk of losing taxpayer dollars, is necessary to ensure competitive fairness. They framed the vote as supporting female athletes disadvantaged by having to compete against those whose gender identify does not match their sex assigned at birth.

Opponents criticized the bill as ostracizing an already vulnerable group merely for political gain.

The House action comes as at least 20 other states have imposed similar limits on trans athletes at the K-12 or collegiate level.

The bill would amend landmark civil rights legislation, known as Title IX, passed more than 50 years ago. It would prohibit recipients of federal money from permitting a person “whose sex is male” to participate in programs designated for women or girls. The bill defines sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

The sponsor, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., highlighted the case of Emma Weyant, a resident of his district and a 2020 member of the U.S. Olympic swimming team who finished second in the NCAA women’s 500-yeard freestyle championship last year. She was defeated by Lia Thomas, who had competed for three years on the University of Pennsylvania men’s swimming team before joining the women’s team.

“The integrity of women’s sports must be protected,” Steube said.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said it was a “great day for America, a great day for girls and women and for fairness in sports.”

Democrats said every child regardless of gender identify deserves the opportunity to belong to a team and that preventing competitors from doing so sends the message that they don’t matter.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who has a transgender daughter, said Republicans were cruelly scapegoating transgender children to score political points. She said three-quarters of transgender students report having experienced harassment or discrimination at school and many have considered suicide.

“These bills tell some of the most vulnerable children in our country that they do not belong,” Jayapal said. “Shame on you.”

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said most people in the United States don’t know anyone who is transgender and that can create fear for politicians to exploit. The bill, he said, does nothing to address the severe inequities in the resources dedicated to men’s and women’s sports.

He highlighted the stance taken by Gov. Spencer Cox, R-Utah, who last year vetoed a bill banning transgender students from playing girls sports. Cox said: “I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion.”

Pocan noted that in Utah at the time of the veto there were four transgender players out of 85,000 competing in high school sports, with only one competing in girls sports.

“There’s your raging national problem,” Pocan said. “What’s the Republicans response to this nonexistent issue? Hurt kids for being kids.”

In a message this week threatening a veto, the White House said that being part of a team is an important part of growing up, staying engaged in school and learning leadership and life skills. It said a national ban that does not account for competitiveness or grade level targets people for who they are and is discriminatory.

The administration also has issued a proposed rule that would prevent any school or college that receives federal money from imposing a “one-size-fits-all” policy that categorically bans trans students from playing on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. Such policies would be considered a violation of Title IX.

Any limits would have to consider the sport, the level of competition and the age of students. Elementary school students would generally be allowed to participate on any teams consistent with their gender identity, for example. More competitive teams at high schools and colleges could add limits, but those would be discouraged in teams that don’t have tryouts or cuts.

“We don’t want biological men taking away the achievements of women who fought so hard to get where they are today,” said Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., the first woman to graduate from The Citadel military college.

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Beef Producers Panic Over mRNA Vaccine News

Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 17, 2023

Madame Von der Leyen – McKinsey and Pfizer

Peter Koenig, April 18, 2023

The 21-year Old Leaker — Something Is Not Right

Larry Johnson, …

The post This Week’s Most Popular Articles appeared first on Global Research.

BRICS De-dollarization Hype — But Will Reality Begin to Dawn, that Nothing New Is on the Table, Really?

By Prof. Patrick Bond, April 20, 2023

The geopolitical situation today appears new and different because of the alleged upscaling of …

The post Selected Articles: BRICS De-dollarization Hype — But Will Reality Begin to Dawn, that Nothing New Is on the Table, Really? appeared first on Global Research.

Surrounded. Contained. Encircled. These feelings are often evoked at a national level by leaders who view their country as being unfairly targeted by its neighbors. This fear of encirclement has long been a part of international affairs, but it is just one of myriad strategic anxieties that a state may face. These grand strategic worries – sometimes legitimate, sometimes irrational – skew perceptions about geopolitical reality. They can be leveraged to achieve foreign policy goals, but can also propel government action in unintended directions.

The strategic anxiety of encirclement is particularly pernicious, as it comes with a vicious cycle of actions and reactions which exemplify the security dilemma. The power fearing encirclement will act to expand its reach so as to break out; its neighbors will see these aggressive actions and react by banding together for defense; the anxious power will see this as confirmation of encirclement and increase aggression. This self-reinforcing process significantly impacts a nation’s foreign policy outlook and harms national security. Nations are particularly susceptible to encirclement paranoia based on geography and history, with modern China and Russia fitting that bill. We can learn about the potential impact of their strategic anxieties through an understanding of historical analogs.

Russia has a deep tradition of encirclement anxiety, and its instantiation in Putin’s Moscow is merely a new spin on an old tale. During the days of the Mongol Yoke, Russians chafed under foreign rule. After Moscow’s assertion of regional dominance, its leaders refused to submit to a repeat of the past, orienting its foreign policy towards expanding its borders away from its Muscovite heartland. To Russian strategists, encirclement would stop this necessary expansion and portend conquest.

Imperial Russia sought to create buffer zones and gain consistent access to the sea in order to ensure its ability to break out of any encircling attempt. That meant consolidating its hold over Ukraine, partitioning Poland, and pushing into Siberia and the Caucasus. In the 19th century, this was seen in two theaters: the Straits question and the Afghan boundary dispute. In the former, Russia was looking for uninterruptible access to the Mediterranean via the Turkish straits; this stoked multiple wars, Crimea and the Russo-Turkish being the most notable. The Afghan boundary dispute was part of the Great Game between Britain and Russia, where each empire sought buffer zones to protect its holdings. Both of these Russian efforts at breaking encirclement raised tensions.

The Soviet Union changed targets, but the paranoia remained. Dual narratives of encirclement were promoted, depending on the situation. Before World War II, the USSR feared encirclement by Germany, Poland, and Japan. Russians had fought all three recently – Germany in 1914, Japan in 1904, and Poland in 1920 – but not in concert. The German-Polish and the German-Japanese agreements were defensive in nature, driven by fear of an internationalist Soviet Union. To break its supposed encirclement, the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany – a temporary peace that quickly brought war. After 1945, it returned to an earlier encirclement narrative, centering hostile capitalists. This fear, mostly of America, led to the forced refusal of Marshall Plan aid and the dropping of the Iron Curtain. This, in turn, led the West into a stronger posture of containment, once again reducing Russian security.

Vladimir Putin has renewed this posture in the 21st century, claiming that NATO expansion has always intended on Russia’s encirclement. Despite the fact that NATO is a defensive alliance and its newest members are historic targets of Russian expansionism, Moscow perceives it as aggressively anti-Russian. This logic has been used most destructively in Ukraine. In the 2014 speech annexing Crimea, Putin linked his strategic anxiety to Russia’s past, saying “we have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, led in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today.” Putin sees Western interest in Ukrainian sovereignty as an act of aggression, something repeated in the 2022 invasion, which he also sought to justify as a response to NATO encirclement. Given the battlefield results, this instance has echoed the past, diminishing Russian security.

China’s encirclement anxiety is best understood not through its own past, but that of Imperial Germany. There are several similarities between the two rising powers: their traditionally continentalist strategy, their construction of Bluewater navies, their historical grudges, and their hegemonic aspirations. The biggest link, however, is their shared perception of encirclement.

Germany, due to its location, had long felt cramped by surrounding powers. After the Wars of Unification, the German Empire acutely sensed the potential for hostile encirclement. Its genius statesman, Otto von Bismarck, deftly neutralized his potential rivals: allying with Austria-Hungary, promoting French colonial expansion to distract from Alsace-Lorraine, and signing the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. This balancing act was, like so much else, unique to Bismarck, and collapsed after his defenestration by Kaiser Wilhelm II. The expansionist, belligerent Weltpolitik – a policy in part meant to avoid encirclement – represented by the Kaiser and Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, antagonized other major European powers.

According to historian Dennis Showalter, “By 1908 at the latest, encirclement, Einkreisung, had evolved from worst-contingency nightmare into everyday reality.” This was clear after the 1906 Algeciras Conference, where a German gambit over Morocco embarrassingly failed to garner any support beyond Austria’s. Chancellor Bülow said before the Reichstag:

A policy aiming at the encirclement of Germany and seeking to form a ring of Powers in order to isolate and paralyze it would be disastrous to the peace of Europe. The forming of such a ring would not be possible without exerting some pressure. Pressure provokes counter-pressure. And out of pressure and counter-pressure finally explosions may arise.

In this moment, Bülow described the fatal logic of encirclement but shifted the onus externally instead of correctly seeing it as internal. Weltpolitik drove the Franco-Russian alliance and fear of German aggression led Britain to settle its territorial disputes with those two long-time adversaries. These ententes were defensive in nature, but paranoid German strategists saw them as deliberate attempts at encirclement.

On the eve of the Great War, the Kaiser saw his anxiety manifest, but still refused his own part in its realization:

So the celebrated encirclement of Germany has finally become an accomplished fact, in spite of all the efforts of our politicians to prevent it. The net has suddenly been closed over our head, and the purely anti-German policy which England has been scornfully pursuing all over the world has won the most spectacular victory.

Xi Jinping’s China is treading that same well-worn path, substituting America for Britain. As China has risen economically, its leaders – Xi in particular – have sought a commensurate increase in geopolitical power. In part, this is meant to avenge the ‘century of humiliation’ during which China was economically colonized by Western powers and stripped of its sphere of influence. Xi and his cadre fear that the United States and its regional allies seek to encircle China and stop it from reclaiming its historic identity as the Middle Kingdom.

To break this perceived cordon sanitaire, China has engaged in belligerent regional activities: militarizing islands in the South China Sea, harassing civilian boats in international waters, and threatening Taiwan. The Chinese Communist Party has adopted a policy of ‘active defense’ of the area it claims as its historic domain; this is merely a cover for expansionism. China’s neighbors have reacted accordingly, aligning with the primary world power, the U.S., to defend their sovereignty. China views these protective moves as bellicose, heightening its fear of encirclement.

This is reflected in Chinese rhetoric around recent events. The new American bases in the Philippines, the warming of relations between Japan and South Korea, and the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal have heightened worries in Beijing. In early March, Xi Jinping expressed this anxiety, stating that “Western countries led by the United States have carried out all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to China’s development.” China’s foreign minister Qin Gang echoed the sentiment: “Containment and suppression will not make America great. It will not stop the rejuvenation of China.” He warned of “conflict and confrontation,” in an eerily similar tone to Bülow. Some in China have noticed this security dilemma, but the CCP seems poised to continue down the primrose path.

These fears of encirclement – historic and modern – begin as irrational, but emerge into reality when the anxiety is indulged. Expansionist actions to counter perceived encirclement cause rational reactions which feed the initial fear in a continuous cycle. In the case of Russia and China, the U.S. should continue with its own policy of building regional defensive partnerships, refusing to indulge these bogus concerns. Even if dictators like Putin and Xi view this as containment, their worries do not override the security choices of their sovereign neighbors. The powers that fear encirclement seek expansion; American strategists should not buy into their false narrative.

The post <strong>The Fatal Logic of Encirclement</strong> appeared first on Providence.

On March 29th, Leonid Volkov, 37, brutally took the lives of his former employees, Kiryl Schukin, 37, and Pavel Vekshin, 28. Volkov stored the bodies in two large rubber bins in an iStorage facility in Brighton, Massachusetts.

This fateful event struck grief and worry into the hearts of Schukin and Vekshin’s friends and co-workers, who promptly filed a missing persons report just nine days after the crime was committed. The police acted swiftly and found the bodies after only five days of searching.

Schukin’s body was in pieces, and investigators stumbled upon discarded items such as rubber gloves and bleach when they peered into the storage unit.

A few months before the murders, he had been living in a Medford apartment that was due to be vacated. Schukin was initially Volkov’s guarantor on the apartment lease, according to him.

However, when the time came to extend the lease, Schukin would not provide the same services. As a result, Volkov was forced to part ways with his abode and face the looming reality of eviction.

Surveillance footage also shows Volkov entering and leaving the victims’ building multiple times in the days after they were last seen alive. Later, Volkov was seen renting a U-Haul from a storage unit business, presumably where he had decided to stow away the corpses.

With an ensuing murder charge, Volkov is set to have his first court hearing in this double homicide case on Tuesday. The Middlesex District Attorney’s Office and the Medford Police Department are still holding onto evidence discovered in the storage unit and continuing to seek justice for the victims and answers about what drove Volkov to such extremes.